1. What is Free Software?
2. What is the difference between Free Software and Open Source Software?
3. What are Open Standards?
4. Why do you use Open Standards?
5. What is Free Educational Material and Documentation?

3.1 What is Free Software?

• The freedom to run the programme, for any purpose. Placing restrictions on the use of Free Software, such as time (30 days trial period'', ''license expires January 1st, 2007''), purpose (''permission granted for research and non-commercial use'') or geographic area (''must not be used in country X'') makes a programme non-free.
• The freedom to study how the programme works, and adapt it to your needs. Placing legal or practical restrictions on the comprehension or modification of a programme, such as mandatory purchase of special licenses, signing of a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA) or making the preferred human way of comprehending and editing a programme (and its ''source code'') inaccessible also makes it proprietary.
• The freedom to make and redistribute copies. If you are not allowed to give a programme to someone else, that makes a programme non-free. Redistributing copies can be done gratis or for a charge, if you so choose.
• The freedom to improve the programme, and release improvements. Not everyone is a programmer, or a programmer equally good in all fields. This freedom allows those with the necessary skills to share them with those who do not possess them. Such modifications can be made gratis or for a charge.

This definition was first documented in the GNU's Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 6, published January 1989 and provides also the basis for SELF.

3.2 What is the difference between Free Software and Open Source Software?

Free Software was first defined on January 1989 in the GNU's bulletins, and in 1992 "Libre Software" was proposed as a synonym based on the same definition. In 1997 Free Software was specified in the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), and in 1998 the DFSG were used as the definition of the term "Open Source" which was proposed as a marketing term for Free Software, later resulting in the combined terms "FOSS" and "FLOSS".

The SELF consortium chooses to speak of Free Software for various reasons. Using the term that was first defined is good scientific tradition, to which SELF is committed. Also, the term Free Software refers to the defining criterion, which is freedom, and is thus better suited in our view to convey understanding. As freedom is a central objective for SELF, we made a decision for Free Software.

3.3 What are Open Standards?

The SELF definition of Open Standards is online here. In brief, standards need to be

1. subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;

2. without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves;

3. free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model;

4. managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;

5. available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.

3.4 Why do you use Open Standards?

The SELF platform provides a repository of contents and open standards will be used to store these contents. We use Open Standards within the SELF platform because of several reasons:

Firstly, all the digital documents stored in the SELF platform must be saved in some open standard format. If some material is to be included in SELF, it should be given (or converted to) in an open standard format.

Secondly, for each document, many different output formats may be possible. For example, one may choose to view some document using a web browser or may want to produce a high quality printed version of some text. All of these output (or presentation) formats (which are not often editable) must also be given in an open standard format. The question whether the different presentations are stored (precomputed) or generated each time by the platform will be taken into consideration at the design and implementation stages. With the first alternative (precomputed output), the platform would require more storage space, whereas an output generated on demand would increase the computational load of the platform.

Thirdly, all the documents in the SELF platform must be organised according to a complex structure. Contents will be provided in different languages, different educational levels, different objectives, and so on. Because of this, the organisation of the contents will be performed using some learning content standard. SELF will store the so-called “metadata”, which is a set of complimentary information associated with each particular content.

3.5 What is Free Educational Material and Documentation?

There are few existing definitions on what is Free Documentation, and almost no discussion of what is Free Educational Material, both of which have comparable roles in the SELF project. For the scope of SELF, Free Educational Material and Documentation are defined as follows:

• Unlimited use for any purpose. Similar to the first freedom defining Free Software, there must be no limitation on the use of the material. In order to qualify as Free, it must in particular permit use in commercial training activities.
• Modification. It must be possible to change the material so it can be improved and kept up-to-date, as well as to enable collaboration and creation of new, combined materials.
• Distribution. It must be possible to distribute the materials in original, modified, and combined forms. It must be at the choice of the individual distributor to do this with or without a fee.